barbaraphilipp

JOSEPHINE

1. Performance:

in Vienna, 2012.

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When the public enters I am already sitting in the projection of my great grandmother´s image. My shadow is visible on the photography, like the audience I am sitting in the darkness. My voice is breaking through the calm atmosphere, I struggle with words and expressions in diverse languages, seeking for comprehension.
The audience is asked to assemble the puzzle of understood words and contents.

in Enschede, 2009.
I enter the room, sit down on a chair in front of the public and the picture of my great- grandmother is projected on me. I am sitting within her picture. The story, written in five languages, traces the relationship to my great-grandmother, of whom I only own a photograph. First, the public listens to the imagined monologue of her in Italian, then I ask myself in German what the name of my great-grandmother can be and how I can obtain more information beyond the photo I have. In French she falls in love like me. The English part describes the travel to her birth-town of my grandmother. Finally I explain the audience in Dutch why I cannot express myself anymore and the dialogue between her and me is interrupted. At that moment, an image of a woman who looks like me appears and a short film fragment is played. The actress looks at the public, turns around and leaves the room slowly and with the sound of her steps on high heels. I stand up and leave the stage in the same rhythm as her, going to the opposite direction while she says : "Voglio cercare le sigarette" ( I want to look for cigarettes).

2. Videowork: after the same called performance, 2009.

Description: An imagined encounter between my great-grandmother and myself, in which the language barrier is part of the game to understand and misunderstand the communication. I talk to her as to a migrant from other days in the hope of finding a line between our situations.
The languages with which I feel at home and which I use have however nothing to do with her life trajectory.
The viewer becomes the witness and the interpretor of the scene.